


Heat

by draculard



Category: Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
Genre: Child on Child Sexual Abuse, F/F, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Mutually Nonconsensual Incest, Parental Abuse, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Craddock always gets what he wants.





	Heat

What Daddy says, goes.

The AC is off; the house seems ripe with a ground-hugging, humid fog. Outside, Anna can hear cicadas singing in the tall, unmowed grass. She has a million things she wants to do; she wants to walk down Swamp Road and catch a bullfrog and wade through mucky water in her bare feet; she wants to climb the big old hickory tree in Mrs. Brissaud’s backyard; she wants to borrow Daddy’s old silver harmonica and play it in tune to the cicadas’ song.

None of these are an option right now. Daddy has decided on something else.

He sits in his favorite old rocking chair with his suit jacket hanging over the back and shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He has to be as hot as Jessica and Anna are (Jessica in her lightest summer dress, her skin grimy with sweat; Anna sitting on the floor in just her bathing suit top and a pair of denim shorts) but he doesn’t look it. Even when a bead of sweat rolls down from his temple to his chin, his cheeks aren’t flushed at all.

He had Jessica make him lemonade earlier, and now he sips it, melting chunks of ice clinking in the glass. Anna watches him, her eyes hooded, hungry. The pitcher sits half-full and sweating on the kitchen counter, but she and Jessica aren’t allowed to have any.

When she stands, thinking only of the tap water in the kitchen, Daddy grabs her by the arm and doesn’t let her go.

Anna stays still. She hears the buzzing of blowflies hovering around Daddy’s face. If she looked at him, she’s sure his eyes would be scratched out, covered in black scribbles.

So she doesn’t look. She feels Jessica staring at her, and Daddy’s grip tightening on her wrist, and she knows what he wants.

“Yes, Daddy,” she says.

* * *

Anna dreams of alligators lurching out of the swamp while she walks there with Daddy, his hand in hers. Their jaws open wide and they snatch Daddy away, leaving a trail of blood on the road, a series of disturbed bubbles in the water. Even in the dream, she knows it isn’t real, and she watches with a sense of disappointment and longing.

When she wakes up, Daddy will still be there. She won’t be saved by any wild animals.

She doesn’t even go on walks with Daddy, anyway.

* * *

“Daddy _said_.”

“I don’t care,” says Anna. She tightens her jaw and refuses to look at Jessica. “I don’t wanna do it.”

Anyone looking through the window would see a familiar scene — two little girls, both blonde and thin, dressed for the heat and sprawled on their stomachs on the living room floor. Anna’s eyes are on her new Rainbow Brite coloring book, her little fingers gripping the crayons tight. Jessica watches her, her own toys abandoned, her eyes narrowed and cruel.

“He’ll make you,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“I don’t care,” says Anna. Her vision blurs. She thinks for a moment that it’s something Daddy’s done — one of the dizzy spells he forces on her when he spins his watch like a pendulum before her eyes. But then she realizes she’s just crying, and she wipes her eyes and sniffs and tries to shut those thoughts away.

The whole time, Jessica watches her. Her blue eyes are placid and undisturbed.

* * *

Years later, what Anna remembers of that summer is lost in a haze. She remembers the thick heat, the dry thunderstorms, the wasps buzzing from their nest above the front door. She remembers Jessica’s skin against her own, sometimes soft and gentle, other times rough, bruising.

She remembers Jessica’s lips pressed against hers. She remembers Jessica whispering to her.

 _Sit still. Don’t cry. Don’t make Daddy mad_.

She remembers the watch swinging before her eyes, and Daddy’s soothing drawl of a voice. The clink of ice cubes in his glass; the sharp scent of lemon; the black scribbles in front of her eyes when she looked in the mirror. She remembers opening her Rainbow Brite coloring book and seeing that someone had taken a black crayon and scratched out the eyes on every single page.

Jessica said Anna had done it.

Daddy said Anna had done it, too; and Daddy said he didn’t know how Anna got those bruises on her thighs, or those scratches on her lower back, or that sharp, stinging ache between her legs.

She remembers how he swung his watch and said she didn’t remember, either.

And what Daddys says, goes.


End file.
